1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to media content management, and in particular to the distribution of shared media content with advertisements and financial arrangements among the distributors, advertisers, and content owners.
2. Background of the Invention
Television and other video content, as well as a myriad of other multimedia, are increasingly finding a home on new devices. For example, television programming is no longer found solely on the television. Through computer networks, as well as other delivery mechanisms, television and other media content are increasingly becoming available on other devices, such as personal computers, mobile phones, PDAs, and other portable computing devices. The increasing availability of the media content also enables viewers to record and share them with others.
One conventional approach for people to share media content is through a peer to peer (P2P) computer network, such as Napster. A P2P computer network is a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating them in a relatively low number of servers. Users of the P2P computer network can share media content stored in computers on the network. However, because much of the media content shared includes copies of copyrighted popular multimedia content (e.g., music and movies), sharing of the media content without copyright owners' permissions is illegal in most jurisdictions. Copyright owners (also known as content owners) tend not to grant such permissions because they do not receive any benefit in return. Also, P2P computer network does not provide content owners with the ability to control the distribution of their media content.
Another conventional approach to share media content is for the content owners to provide mechanisms for users to share their media content. For example, the content owners can provide their media content in their websites. People who want to access the media content can visit these websites to access them. However, this approach is inconvenient for the users because there is no central place to access media content. Also, not all content owners have the financial capacity to provide mechanisms for users to access their media content.
Thus, from the above, there is a need for a system and process allowing users to share media content, granting the content owners rights to control the use of their media content, and enabling operators of the system and process to generate advertisement revenue.